Dictation question for you guys

[Alison in KY]

A friend has a 5th grader that she is trying to do dictation the WTM way. She is dictating 3 sentenses three times, then she asks her daughter to write those sentenses out from memory. Her daughter isn't getting it perfectly..but she gets the general idea, she's just replacing or leaving out a few words. Is this acceptable? Do you leave it at that or do you then tell them.."it's supposed to be an 'and' here or a 'that' there?

 

I personally thought when you dictated you were supposed to be reading it aloud as the kids wrote the sentences down, but she thought that you were supposed to let them hear it a few times, then dictate from their memory. Maybe you can straighten us both out.:)

 

Thanks,

Alison

[Colleen in NS]

A friend has a 5th grader that she is trying to do dictation the WTM way. She is dictating 3 sentenses three times, then she asks her daughter to write those sentenses out from memory. Her daughter isn't getting it perfectly..but she gets the general idea, she's just replacing or leaving out a few words. Is this acceptable? Do you leave it at that or do you then tell them.."it's supposed to be an 'and' here or a 'that' there?

 

I personally thought when you dictated you were supposed to be reading it aloud as the kids wrote the sentences down, but she thought that you were supposed to let them hear it a few times, then dictate from their memory. Maybe you can straighten us both out.:)

 

Thanks,

Alison

 

I *think* the idea is that eventually you could dictate two or three sentences at a time and they could write it down, but my 10ds has not reached that point yet.

 

So what we do is this: I read two or three sentences aloud to him, slowly. Then I read it one or two more times. While he listens. Then I begin again, phrase by phrase, and have him repeat it all back to me, phrase by phrase (unless he sails correctly ahead of me, which is good). Then I say, "now write it down." Most of the time so far, I have to say the first phrase to him again, and sometimes still coach him through each phrase. Depends on how much he is paying attention.

 

I don't let ds make up his own words or write down his general idea. I have him write exactly what I have read to him. It forces him to pay attention to detail, with specific words, and punctuation. Also, I choose the sentences based on words and punctuation that I want him to practice. This helps him to think about what type of punctuation to use, and where to use it, and spelling of words. If he repeats it back to me, not as I have read, I repeat it to him and have him re-say it correctly.

 

hth

[Peela]

No, I don't think that is the best way to do dictation.

 

My understanding is (and I have been doing dictation for years and I was brought up on dictation myself) that while it is good to read the whole dictation first, the child should not be expected to remember several sentences.

 

I break dictations down into phrases- phrases that the child will be able to remember while also being stretched to hold them in his mind. The child shouldn't make many mistakes or they are not yet able to hold that many words at a time in their mind. They should be gently challenged and if they make mistakes they should be gently corrected so that they are not writing something incorrect down (for example a spelling error). Although, my kids are older and I don't generally do this unless I see a blatant error.

 

I would say that if a child can remember three sentences, the sentences may be too easy. Instead, the difficulty of the dictation could be upped, and then the dictation read out phrase by phrase- a sentence if it's not too long. This should still be a gentle challenge, so the difficulty of the language can be quite high.

 

My kids do studied dictations. They look at the dictation first and go over and write out any difficult words. Then I read it out phrase by phrase- as much as they can remember if the room is quiet and they are not distracted- it is a way of training the mind to hold thoughts in it, to focus, to hold a visual image of words.

I tell the punctuation because I think it is generally too difficult to work out, but maybe we will get to the point where the kids work out their own punctuation. That is not a priority for me- I don't want dictation to be stressful. I will repeat a phrase if they forget.

When I was a highschool student and we did dictation, the teacher would read each phrase twice, so I don't think there is a problem with doing that.

Then when we are finished, I read the whole passage through to them without saying the punctuation, and they check their work- this is where we often catch small word errors. Then I mark it.